Sir, – I would like to respond to Paul Mooney’s rather transparent advertisement for his consultancy company, which you chose to give a near half page to (Education Today, March 20th). This contract pitch went from anecdote to unsubstantiated claim and back again in an attempt to denigrate Irish lecturing staff.
Here are a few facts. Quoting directly from the HEA document “Towards a Future higher Education Landscape”, February 13th, 2012: “Ecofin, on behalf of Ministers for Finance in EU countries, found that Ireland came first out of 28 countries in terms of the number of graduates per 1,000 inhabitants. It scored second out of 27 countries in terms of graduates per academic staff member. It ranked first in terms of how employers rate our graduates, and found that Irish universities are one of three countries where the highest excellence rating is given by academics in other EU countries.”
Third Level Education in Ireland is currently under serious assault and being positioned as a broken and expensive institution requiring reform. The Irish Times would provide greater service to its readers if it critically evaluated that position instead of providing free advertising space for organisations keen to move in on a managerialist education landscape. – Yours, etc,
Sir, – Our first reaction to Dr Paul Mooney’s article (“Inside third level”, March 20th) was that April Fool’s Day had arrived a fortnight early and that Irish lecturers were the target of a clever comic sketch. Unfortunately, on closer examination Dr Mooney’s contribution has more to do with farce than satire.
Dr Mooney appears to engage in the age-old practice (at least when it comes higher education) of criticism by anecdote, based on sweeping generalisations and a recital of largely inaccurate claims about academic practice. It is not surprising that Dr Mooney feels that the use of research time by academics is unproductive – he deserves credit at least for consistency in avoiding any research in this article, which is refreshingly free of any objective analysis.
It is striking that he fails to produce even the most flimsy evidence to support his severe criticisms of academic staff in higher education institutions. He suggests that some lecturers are “lazy” and fail to update their material – based entirely on an example with a single lecturer from his own experience as a student at some time in the past. An uncharitable observer might suggest that it was lazy to generalise about academic practice across all institutions based on a single experience.
And like snuff at a funeral, the old cliché is passed around that academic research is valuable only if it contributes to “Ireland Inc”.
Dr Mooney’s piece claims to “lift the lid on third level”, but is essentially a caricature of academic life: he depicts a fictional “ivory tower” which no longer exists, if it ever did. – Yours, etc,
Sir, – Dr Paul Mooney clearly has no concept of how long it takes to prepare for an hour of the kind of the quality teaching he’s ostensibly trying to promote here.
I teach at a top-ranking UK university. I have an average of under 10 contact hours a week. For the past few weeks this has amounted to around 50 hours a week in the office (including 20 hours on various admin tasks). I know of no colleagues who get away with a 35-hour week (even though this is what their contract usually stipulates). I’m writing this at 2am because I’ve just finished preparing for a 9am seminar tomorrow. This is the reality.
As for “helping Ireland Inc move up the value chain towards becoming a smart economy”; If Mr. Mooney can get back to us some time with an English translation of this blather we can start a discussion.
Top quality academic research is for the ages. These modish mantras, performance indicators, and management shibboleths are ephemeral and illusory. If Mr Mooney agrees to let academics get on with the real work, we’ll happily leave him alone to conjure up next year’s buzzwords.
In my experience, students have no desire to take on the role of “critical consumers” in market model of education. They want to be students. There’s a fundamental problem here: the customer is always right,but students can only progress intellectually once they’ve accepted the fact that they are ignorant in certain respects and are prepared to commit to the necessarily unequal relationship that constitutes productive pedagogy. – Yours, etc,
Sir, – While Paul Mooney’s musings (Inside third level, Education Today, March 20th) appear to relate only to the university sector in which he once worked, it is most unfortunate that he refers to “third-level” rather than universities in some of his points. We can only assume that this is an error in labelling, because in institutes of technology at least, his points do not bear even a passing resemblance to the daily realities.
Institute lecturers teach 18 to 20 hours per week where the international norm is 10 to 12. For each hour of teaching, a multiple is spent in evaluation, preparation and reflection. Included in a lengthy list of other academic responsibilities are research, devising and updating syllabuses on an ongoing basis, course development and planning and extensive continuous and final assessment.
In particular, his thoughts on research are risibly at odds with this crucial part of the institutes’ mission; at a time when we hear little beyond lip service to the concept of the knowledge economy, institute lecturers carry out extensive applied research, always with a strong focus on the needs of industry.
However, perhaps the most worrying and disappointing aspect of his piece is the failure by a former academic to make any meaningful reference to the effects that the litany of cutbacks of the past few years have had and will continue to have on third-level students. – Yours, etc,
A chara, – I take it that Dr Paul Mooney (Education Today, March 20th) had tried to publish his article in the Journal of Anecdotal Evidence first before trying The Irish Times? – Is mise,